Distance Education Course: Managing Irrigation for Horticulture
- Learn water management, to grow better plants
- A unique course, with practical application across all types of horticulture, developed and taught by highly trained & experienced professional horticulturists
Duration: 100 hours
COURSE CONTENT
There are eight lessons as follows:
1. Waste water and recycling – teaches students how to minimize water wastage in irrigation.
2. Measuring water usage – examines how to schedule irrigation for a large scale situation such as a large nursery, crop, turf, garden or pasture.
3. Drainage – presents an analysis the design of different drainage systems
4. Irrigation controllers – looks at the formulation of procedures to operate irrigation controllers, for appropriate tasks
5. System maintenance – examines the maintenance of irrigation systems, both small and large scale
6. Fertigation – examines the management of fertigation of plants through an irrigation system
7. Design evaluation – looks at the evaluation of the design of large scale irrigation systems
8. System design – students will learn how to design an irrigation system, including its drainage
Examples of what you may do
This course is all about experiential learning -not just reading, but you are given all sorts of practical and research tasks that will build your knowledge and contacts (networking) within the industry, by seeing and doing things in the "real world"; for example:
Contact an enterprise involved in irrigation management. Ask them for information on their water restriction policy. When are water restrictions enforced and how do they affect water users? Focus mainly on the problems experienced by agricultural users. Are there ways that Ag users can minimise their dependence on water access? Write a brief report on your findings and submit with your assignment.- Visit an agricultural property that uses irrigation. Discuss with the manager the methods that are used to decide when to water and how much water to use. Is irrigation an important element in the success or otherwise of the property? Submit your findings with your assignment.
- Choose a drainage system to which you can get access. Remember a drainage system is designed to cope with most situations. They are many examples in your local everyday environment. Some examples might include the guttering on your house or even on your car. Discuss how the system operates and include sketches to show design features. Submit with your assignment. (No more than one (1) page is required.)
- Contact a number of companies that offer computerised and technology solutions to irrigation. Obtain prices and information if possible on appropriate working installations of their product. If possible try a follow up visit at least one (1) operation and discuss the product with a user as well as a retailer. If distance or transport is a problem then you could try writing for this information, which would be suitable for the purpose of this set task. Send your results in with your next assignment.
- Visit a farmer or agricultural producer who incorporated irrigation systems. Find sufficient farmers (producers) who use spray, micro, surface and flood systems.
- Enquire about the maintenance of their systems.
- How is water quality monitored and maintained?
- Locate at least two irrigation supply companies.
- Observe how they service customers. Are there any other services they provide?
Water is a renewable resource within a fixed supply. The world's total amount of water has been estimated at 1.35 x 10 to the eighteenth power cubic metres (or 1600 million, million, million litres). Most of this is in a form unsuitable for human use, and there is uneven distribution around the world. About 97.2% is in salty oceans or seas, and about 2.48% is in ice caps or glaciers, aquifers too deep to extract from, in the atmosphere or in topsoil. Only about 0.32% is useable ground or surface water. Of this, 99% is too expensive to get, is in remote areas, or it is polluted. Only about 0.003% of the world's total water supply is usable. This provides about 12 million litres of useable water per person. For example, in the USA (typical of developed nations), the average daily use per person through direct personal use is about 700 litres, through indirect personal use is about 2300 litres, and through indirect agricultural use is about 4000 litres. This equates to a total of about 7000 litres per person per day.
There should be plenty of water for everyone, however three controlling factors: very unequal distribution, rapidly rising demand, and increasing pollution around urban and industrial areas - means that some areas of the planet are already using water at a greater rate than it is being replenished. Taking Australia as an example, this includes parts of the states of Western Australia, New South Wales and Victoria. Water management will become increasingly important as the world tries to cater for the increasing demand for useable water.
The aim of irrigation management is to re-use water as much as possible, to collect and store as much water as possible, and to ensure that what water you do use is used in an efficient manner.
ENROL AND DEVELOP YOUR WATER MANAGEMENT SKILLS
